54: Guide to Turning a $5 Hobby Product into Thousands
In this episode, I’m super excited to welcome my special guest, Lisa Fink. Lisa wears many hats: she’s a course creator, former teacher, blogger, puzzle enthusiast, and mom to 4 adorable Yorkies.
She’s a rockstar in the online business world, reaching 7-figure sales on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers. Her journey from a classroom teacher to a top online entrepreneur is truly inspiring.
Today, she’s here to share her story, insights, and tips on how to make a mark in the world of digital products.
Lisa’s path to success wasn’t a straight line. She went from dealing with her husband’s job loss to building multiple six-figure businesses.
Along the way, she learned a lot about resilience, creativity, and thinking outside the box. In this episode, Lisa dives into the strategies she uses to help teachers and Etsy sellers create printables that stand out and make real money.
Whether you’re just starting out or looking to improve your game, Lisa’s practical advice and encouraging words will give you the boost you need to succeed to turn a $5 hobby product into thousands.
Mentioned In This Episode
How to get in touch with Lisa: Website, Lisa's Etsy Store, Free Gift: Learn to Sell Printable for Kids
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Transforming Hobbies into Thriving Businesses
Our recent podcast episode with Lisa Fink, a former teacher turned seven-figure online business owner, delves into this exciting journey. Lisa’s story is a testament to the power of resilience, creativity, and strategic thinking. Here, we’ll explore her path, the lessons she’s learned, and practical tips for anyone looking to follow in her footsteps.
From Classroom to Online Success
Lisa Fink's journey from a classroom teacher to a top seller on platforms like Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers is both inspiring and instructional. In 2017, after her husband lost his job, Lisa faced the daunting challenge of finding additional income to support her family. With a background in teaching, she turned to Teachers Pay Teachers, a marketplace for educational materials, hoping to make a modest $100 to $300 a month. Little did she know that this venture would soon lead to consistent five-figure months.
The turning point came when Lisa realized the potential of printable products. By focusing on creating high-quality, unique resources for teachers, she quickly distinguished herself in a crowded market. Her ability to adapt and innovate during challenging times, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, further solidified her success. This adaptability is a crucial lesson for anyone looking to start or grow an online business.
The Power of Diversification
One of the key strategies Lisa employed was diversification. Initially, her entire income was dependent on Teachers Pay Teachers. However, the pandemic taught her the importance of not putting all her eggs in one basket. As schools closed and demand for classroom resources dropped, Lisa pivoted to Etsy, creating printable games and escape rooms for children. This move not only stabilized her income but also opened up new avenues for growth.
Lisa’s experience underscores the importance of having multiple streams of revenue. For online business owners, this could mean expanding to different platforms, creating various types of products, or exploring new market segments. Diversification reduces risk and provides a buffer against unforeseen circumstances.
Creating High-Quality Printables
A significant factor in Lisa's success is her emphasis on quality over quantity. When she first started on Etsy, her initial products were simple trivia games that didn’t sell well. Through trial and error, she learned that to stand out, her products needed to be unique and of high quality. This realization led her to create more complex and engaging printable games that could not be easily replicated.
For those looking to create and sell printables, Lisa advises focusing on products that require thought and creativity. The goal is to offer something that buyers can’t easily recreate themselves. Additionally, she highlights the importance of well-designed covers and thumbnails that showcase the product effectively and attract buyers' attention.
Utilizing SEO and Effective Descriptions
In the world of online sales, getting your products seen is half the battle. Lisa emphasizes the importance of search engine optimization (SEO) and detailed product descriptions. She recommends using tools like ChatGPT to help write comprehensive and engaging descriptions that answer potential buyers' questions and make the product irresistible.
An effective product description should be more than a few sentences; it should provide all the details a buyer might need. This includes the number of pages, age suitability, materials needed, and how the product can be used. The more information you provide, the more confident a buyer will feel about their purchase.
The Role of Branding
Lastly, Lisa stresses the importance of consistent branding. From the fonts and colors used in your logo to the design elements in your product listings, every detail contributes to your brand's identity. A strong, recognizable brand helps build trust with your audience and encourages repeat business.
Lisa’s own brand, Think Tank Teacher, is instantly recognizable across her products and platforms. This consistency not only sets her apart from competitors but also fosters loyalty among her customers. For new sellers, establishing a clear and cohesive brand identity from the start is crucial for long-term success.
Conclusion
Lisa Fink’s story is a powerful example of how passion, creativity, and strategic thinking can transform a hobby into a thriving online business. Her journey from a classroom teacher to a seven-figure entrepreneur offers valuable lessons for anyone looking to enter the world of digital products. By focusing on quality, diversifying income streams, leveraging SEO, and building a strong brand, aspiring entrepreneurs can set themselves up for success.
Whether you’re just starting or looking to grow your existing business, Lisa’s insights provide a roadmap for turning your hobbies into a profitable venture. Remember, it’s not just about having a great product; it’s about presenting it in a way that stands out and resonates with your audience. With these strategies, you can navigate the competitive landscape and achieve your business goals.
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Transcript:
Dr. Destini Copp [00:00:04]:
And my special guest today is Lisa Fink. Lisa is a course creator, former teacher, blogger, puzzle lover, and mom to 4 Yorkies. She's also a 7 figure online business owner reaching the top 1% seller status on Etsy and Teachers Pay Teachers in a noticeably short amount of time. She has refined her skills so that she can share them with other like minded creatives. And, Lisa, thank you so much for joining me. I cannot wait to jump into all the questions that I have for you. But before we get into those, can you tell the good audience just a little bit more about you and how you help people?
Lisa Fink [00:01:44]:
Absolutely. First, I wanted to say thank you so much for having me. I love having the opportunity to share my story. And before I give a background to my story, what I do today is help teachers or Etsy sellers create printables that even though there is a saturated market, I have templates and techniques that help them stand out on the platform that they choose. And most importantly, I want to encourage people to understand that it is very possible to turn a $5 product or a $10 product into 1,000 of dollars of revenue.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:02:33]:
I cannot wait to jump in to all of this, and I definitely want to know more about those techniques. But tell us a little bit first about your journey, and how did you get into all of this? Like, how how did it Was it something that you've always wanted to do, or did it fall in your lap? Or take us from, you know, a few years ago and tell us about your journey.
Lisa Fink [00:02:56]:
Sure. So I was a classroom teacher for 15 years. And in 2017, in August, my husband and I bought a new house. Well, 1 month later, he lost his job of 20 years, and we became very anxious and nervous about how we were gonna pay the bills and how we were going to afford this new mortgage. And I had heard of Teachers Pay Teachers, where teachers post and sell their lesson plans online. But what I had only been is the buyer side, not the seller side. But once my husband lost his job, I knew that there was something that I had to do to bring in a little bit of extra income. And to be honest, when I started, I was hoping maybe an extra 100 to $300 a month with a goal in 1 year being $500 per month.
Lisa Fink [00:03:58]:
But it's been a wildly amazing roller coaster ride. And just 6 months in, I was already having 5 figure months. And with that knowledge of printables and teachers pay teachers, in 2021, I decided to open an Etsy shop. And I don't sell the same educational products as I do on Teachers Pay Teachers. It's a completely different audience. And on Etsy, I sell printable games and escape rooms for kids. But my big lesson came during COVID because classrooms shut down. Teachers weren't buying lesson plans because schools weren't in session, and so my sales really took a nosedive because all of my sales were in one basket.
Lisa Fink [00:04:57]:
All of my eggs were in one basket. So in 2021, I decided to open an Etsy shop with my brother who is also a puzzle lover and we do escape rooms, murder mysteries, scavenger hunts, things like that. And both stores are multiple 6 figure earners, and it has just been an amazing journey that I do not regret.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:05:25]:
So, Lisa, the next question I have for you is around Etsy. I know a lot of people who are listening here are interested in selling on Etsy, and maybe even they've dipped their toes into into selling there and put some products up on Etsy, whether it's, you know, handmade products that they've made or even digital products, but they're not seeing the kind of success that you're seeing. Can you walk us through how did you figure out the, I guess, the the magic bullet there because it seems to me that you figured it out. How did you figure it out? Was it somebody that told you, or did you learn it on your own? And then then I definitely wanna get into some of those techniques that you mentioned a few minutes ago.
Lisa Fink [00:06:08]:
Sure. So I would say my journey came with, honestly, just a lot of trial and error. When I first opened my Etsy shop, I was creating 10 question trivia games that were only 1 to 2 pages long. And you know what? They did not sell. So what I realized is that if someone can easily recreate what I have, it's not going to be a top earner. It's not going to be a best seller. What makes someone successful with printables is creating something that is not easy to recreate. On Etsy, it is not about the quantity, which is what I used to think, but it is about the quality of the content.
Lisa Fink [00:07:04]:
And more than just the product itself, you need to have a cover that shares or showcases what your purchasers are getting. You need to have thumbnails that stand out that really answer all of the questions that the buyer may have when they're looking at your product, and you want some sort of emotion to kind of spark in the buyer that makes them say, hey. I wanna look at this, or I'm gonna click on this listing and read the description and learn more. So, really, the focus is the product itself. Is it something that can easily be recreated? And we know that everyone nowadays knows how to use Canva, or is it something that takes a lot of thought? Many people recreate these games with 1 page Canva templates, and those just aren't They just don't have that spark and that creativity that people are looking for. And so what I did was really search the Internet for success stories. There's so much free advice on YouTube. A lot of Etsy sellers have webinars or master classes that you can join.
Lisa Fink [00:08:34]:
So all of my knowledge honestly comes from free tools or free courses or free products. So I encourage people to really look at some established Etsy sellers and more than likely they have some sort of lead magnet that's free that they want to give you to get you on their email list. And a lot of times, they contain really valuable golden nuggets of information. And so I kinda pieced all of that together. And don't get me wrong, I have gone back to products and updated them or revamped them. I have a tendency to be a perfectionist. But the best part about printables, it is sort of a set it and forget it mentality. Once you hosted it, once you love how it looked, it can generate passive income for weeks months years down the line.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:09:39]:
And I know that people are listening. They're creative. They love to come up with new ideas and new products and create things. What would you say if they were wanting to set up an Etsy store to sell printables? Where would you suggest they start? Is there a specific niche that they should get into? Or how how should they go about that process? What research should they do?
Lisa Fink [00:10:07]:
Sure. So I have already done a lot of keyword research for my Etsy shop. And like I said, I create escape rooms for kids, for party games, for rainy day activities. What's really unique about this niche of printables for kids is that there is a high, high demand on Etsy, but the competition is low. If you were to put in printable escape room for kids on Etsy and do a search, the results are less than 6,000. And I know 6,000 might sound like, you know, a really large number to some, but to me, that is a tiny, tiny number. If you were to put escape room in the search bar on Teachers Pay Teachers, there's over 30,000 results. So I feel like Etsy, there is still room for everyone and it is really an untapped market.
Lisa Fink [00:11:06]:
The party games, the escape rooms, the puzzles, something that parents want to entertain their kids that doesn't require screen time.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:11:19]:
So that's a good point. And if they're wanting to do that type of research, do they do that on Etsy, or is there another website that they need to go to do that keyword research, really to find out what the demand is, but also data. You
Lisa Fink [00:11:34]:
can use keyword research tools like Everbee, but you won't get a lot of data. You can use keyword research tools like Everbee, but you won't get a lot of data. You can use keyword research tools like Everbee, eRank, or Insight Factory, and a lot of them come with a free version. You don't have to have a paid plan to to dive in. If you're looking for basic information, then you can simply use the free tools that they offer.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:12:02]:
Okay. And we'll make sure that those links are in the show notes so people know how to find those search search tools. You mentioned a few minutes ago that you have figured out some techniques to stand out. And I think pretty much no matter what we're doing on Etsy or in our business, we definitely want to stand out in the Some of the techniques I have learned to stand out is
Lisa Fink [00:12:31]:
Some of the techniques I have learned to stand out is really to create something that's not easy to reproduce. And what I'm not saying is that you need to create a game that's 248 pages long. What I'm saying is if you're creating a game for kids, don't create a basic word search or a boring find something blue type of scavenger hunt. So for example, I sell scavenger excuse me, scavenger hunts in my Etsy shop, multiple versions of them. In some of them, there is a clue that leads them to the next location, but there is a cipher there or a puzzle that they have to solve in order to go to the next location. Other things that really matter when standing out are your page elements. Honestly, the borders you choose, the fonts you choose, the clip art you choose. A lot of mistakes new sellers on Etsy make is their font choices and the size of their fonts.
Lisa Fink [00:13:39]:
Now even though those cursive fonts look really fancy and nice, they're extremely difficult to read on mobile. So what you're looking for on your cover, the first impression that everyone sees from you is a large chunky font that stands out. And when it comes to thumbnails on Etsy, you really wanna show the product in action. You want to show you want to leave no questions unanswered. You wanna show them exactly what they're getting, how they set it up, what the kids are gonna do, if there's extra materials needed, so on and so forth. And lastly, I would say, especially with AI now and tools like chat GPT, think one of the most difficult things new sellers have is SEO or search engine optimization. What I advise people to do is to write up a description about their product and then put it into chat GPT or an AI tool and ask them to rewrite it for you. And when you do this, you are gonna get lots of foundational elements that you want to include.
Lisa Fink [00:15:00]:
It's gonna take some tweaking and it's not going to be perfect, but just having that extra set of sentences or descriptive words that really draw in the buyers is really helpful for when you're not sure what to write. And even ChatGPT can generate a list of keywords for you, long tail keywords for you that you wanna focus on for your product description. Again, another mistake that I see in descriptions is sometimes they're 1 to 2 paragraphs, you know, 3 to 5 sentences and that's it. That's not enough to pull in your buyers. You really need to put in as many details as possible, what they're getting, how many puzzles there are, what, age group this activity is best suited for. Is anything that you can think of that a buyer might ask you, include that in your description. You want all questions to be answered. You want the buyer to say, yes.
Lisa Fink [00:16:08]:
You've answered all my questions. This is exactly what I'm looking for. And I love how you brought up using AI and chat gpt to help us with this process. I and we all know that it's not perfect, but it does kinda streamline the process
Dr. Destini Copp [00:16:24]:
for us. And so I guess my next question is if somebody is considering getting into Etsy and selling the print printables, but they are really struggling in terms of, you know, what kind of products to have or, you know, how to design them. Would you suggest going to, like, an AI, like chat gpt to kinda help kick start their thinking there?
Lisa Fink [00:16:47]:
To be honest, AI generates the questions, but not really the page layout. If you're looking for templates that are basically premade for you, where the fonts are chosen, all of the
Dr. Destini Copp [00:17:01]:
page elements are correct, and the graphic
Lisa Fink [00:17:01]:
design is done for you, elements are correct and the graphic design is done for you, then you should look for something like easy escape rooms, which is one of my signature courses or, you know, a template from anyone else but the key to templates is changing things up so that yours doesn't look like everyone else's. But inside Easy Escape Rooms with the templates I use, you can change the layout of the page. You can change the borders. You can change the colors. You can change the fonts. Tie in all of your branding, and make it unique to yourself, but to save time, to not have to do all the puzzle research. If you know nothing about graphic design, then templates for me are a 100% the way to go. And once you get the hang of things, your brain is gonna be teeming with ideas of other things you can create.
Lisa Fink [00:18:03]:
And once you see a template from a well established seller and what good graphic design looks like, then you can go on and create your next product line or your next activity.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:18:17]:
So, Lisa, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. Before we hang up here, do you have any last minute tips for the audience?
Lisa Fink [00:18:29]:
I would say branding matters, and try to think about it from the beginning. The font you choose in your logo matters. The color you choose in your logo matters. The layout of your covers matters. The goal is that when someone sees one of my covers, regardless for what type of activity it is, they say, oh, that's a think tank product. I've seen them before. I know them. I like them.
Lisa Fink [00:18:59]:
I'm gonna click on this. Click on this. You want to be recognizable to your audience once they've become a little familiar with you and you can use your branding, of course, in social media as well to gain exposure and send traffic to your store.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:19:19]:
So such great tips there. Lisa, before we hang up, can you let folks know where they can find you? I believe you have a free gift for them too. And I also wanna include the link to your Etsy shop in our show notes too.
Lisa Fink [00:19:35]:
So my business is Think Tank Teacher on Etsy though. We are Think Tank Escape Rooms, and I have a free 80 page getting started on Etsy guide for new Etsy sellers that want to learn to create printables for kids. The focus is on printables, but it also goes over branding and product optimization and SEO and covers and all of the juicy details that I didn't know when I was starting out. But now you can get all of my advice on what to do and what not to do on Etsy.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:20:18]:
So they could use that if they wanna start a printable shop or if they wanna sell, like, handmade items on Etsy, it would work for that too.
Lisa Fink [00:20:26]:
It technically would work for handmade, but it doesn't cover shipping and handling or anything like that or physical products. This is more for someone who wants to create printables. But it doesn't just have to be printables for kids, you know, it can be a planner or a house cleaning schedule. It's for people that wanna sell printables.
Dr. Destini Copp [00:20:45]:
Perfect. And we will have that link in the show notes. And Lisa, again, thank you so much for joining me today.
Lisa Fink [00:20:51]:
Thank you so much for having me.